The Asshole Manifesto

This is my manifesto, written last year:

A new beginning enters through the door that the past slams shut. I choose to close myself off from my emotions.

The showing of emotions = vulnerability.

I can’t control my emotions. But I can bottle them up. By keeping a lid on what I feel, I can never reveal my true self to the outside world. I doubt that even I know my true self. I cry myself to sleep with these secrets I choose to keep.

My insides churn at the thought of you knowing how I feel about you. Pretending not to care is becoming tougher by the day. Inferiority is my best friend. I wear it like a hat. I can’t remember what love feels like.

Life is passing me by.

I wake up every day, wishing it were my last. I’m not a burden anyone should bear. The weight of a thousand men rests on my shoulders.

My pain reassures me, it consoles me, and it fits me like a shoe. I am capable of loving someone as deep as an ocean, but I fear I will never get that chance.

Everything I touch turns to shit. Have you seen my will to live? I seem to have lost it. My invisible friends are my only friends. I am helpless, but not helpless. I take comfort in my sadness. I am happily sad.

‘Tis not better to lose in love than to never love at all. Never knowing love knows not the fear of heartache. The sleepless nights are often the loneliest.

Would you like some pancakes?

I am a disease. I am a piece of shit. Everyone knows that. And for all those that don’t, I should try harder. I should throw in the towel, or should I keep it and hang myself with it?

It’s time to cut my losses, and my wrists.

Nikki Webster will be working at your local McDonalds this time next year.

Maybe I should open up to you. Maybe then I will know where I stand; maybe I will know where I sit. Sometimes I don’t know whether I am coming or going. I am going nowhere, and I’m making good time.

These are the words of me. These innermost secrets might as well be revealed from the keeper.
Without you, I am nothing.
Without you, I am something.

Persecute me not for who I am, but for who you think I am. Ask forgiveness for future acts of discrimination. I may not have directly burdened you with my company, but chances are you will know someone who has. Pity them, as their lifelong despair is just about to begin.

I miss the sight of you in spite of everything. I long for one last embrace, not an empty silence over a telephone line. Every day without you is longer than the day before. There is no tomorrow.

But before I have time to grasp the concept of a never ending today, I have to think about all my yesterdays. I regret everything, and everyone. And I am confident that you think the same way. But I am not confident in myself. Every day takes you further away from me, and part of me believes that this is for the best.

I feel sorry for you, but I am not even close to feeling sorry for myself.

I need time to think, I need time to drink.

I need time to take all this in. I need time to let it all out.

My hand throbs from the pain of writing what I feel, but to be able to express my thoughts, my feelings and my concerns pains me tenfold. But it is a necessary process. This is my manifesto.

Happiness. A calm, blue ocean. A married couple, two kids, and a home in the suburbs. The great Australian dream, the great universal cliché. A cliché I shall never know, a life I will never have the privilege of experiencing.

I have problems. Everyone has problems. We are fat, we are ugly, we wear happy pants, and we sometimes have braces. We are the minority. We are the lepers of society. Some of us long to become white bread society folk, some of us long to eat white bread.

I am like a goldfish, swimming in my own excrement.
I could have been the cure, but I am more likely to be the disease. I am nothing. I once had dreams, but I gave them up when I realised that they mattered little in comparison with achievements.

I have it better than some, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I bite my toenails. I can change if I wanted to. I am swimming in a stream of unconsciousness.

I am a man of contradiction. I am not a man of contradiction.

I feel a lot better now that these words have flowed on to paper. This is unedited, uncensored and unadulterated emotion, the very kind of which I was afraid to reveal from the beginning. After reading this, I guarantee you that your opinion of me will have changed.

I wish mine could.